Elizabeth Warren’s new book: Run-ins with Obama and praise for Hillary Clinton

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) flustered both President Barack Obama and his former economic advisor on top of making Republicans “nervous,” according to an her upcoming autobiography, the Boston Globe reported on Wednesday.

In the book, scheduled to be released on April 22, Warren wrote that Obama informed her during a 2010 meeting in the Oval Office that he would not nominate her to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saying she made Senate GOP members and Wall Street executives “very nervous.” Ohio State Treasurer Richard Cordray would subsequently be nominated instead, although his own nomination process also faced Republican opposition.

During another meeting a few weeks later, Warren expressed her reluctance to Obama’s suggestion that she take on a consultancy role to assist in setting the bureau up.

“You’re jamming me, Elizabeth,” she quoted Obama as saying. When she accepted the position, Warren wrote, the president “urged me not to overplay my hand.”

Politico reported that Warren’s book also contains a brief mention of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying Clinton promised Warren in 1998 that she would “fight on behalf of working families” against the bill that would eventually be known as the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2000, which had gained support from the finance industry. Clinton’s husband, then-President Bill Clinton, would later use the “pocket veto” to kill the bill.

Hillary Clinton has been the rumored front-runner for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2016, though some progressives have also made the case for Warren to seek the nomination, which some observers say could be buoyed by the new book, titled A Fighting Chance.

“It’s not the book that would have been on the syllabus for her Harvard Law School class,” Democratic consultant Chris Lehane told the Globe, adding that if Warren does make a bid for the White House, “it will be on the syllabus of every reporter covering the presidential election in 2016.”

The book also reportedly chronicles the deterioration of her relationship with Larry Summers, a former Harvard colleague who became Obama’s economic advisor. Summers also opposed Warren’s nomination to lead the bureau, she wrote, but during one dinner he told her she faced a choice between being an “insider” or an “outsider,” arguing that being an insider offered the benefit of access to present her ideas to the powerful.

“But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders,” Warren wrote, quoting Summers. “I had been warned.”

About the Author

Arturo R. García is the managing editor at Racialicious.com. He is based in San Diego, California and has written for both print and broadcast media, including contributions to GlobalComment.com, The Root and Comment Is Free. Follow him on Twitter at @ABoyNamedArt